Four letters from Vladimir Ilyich to A. N. Potresov, covering the period from September 1898 to June 1899, represent a most significant contribution to the history of the formation of Leninism. We see in them Lenin at the moment when revisionism — both international and Russian — is only just about to step onto the historical arena. The gospel of revisionism, Bernstein's book, appeared in print only in January '99 and had not yet reached Eastern Siberia, where Lenin lived. The "Separate appendix to Rabochaya Mysl" — the most frank work of Russian economism — had not yet appeared. Struve, Tugan-Baranovsky, Bulgakov still considered themselves Marxists and were considered Genossen, party comrades. The foreign exploits of Prokopovich, Kuskova, etc., had not yet reached Siberia. Vladimir Ilyich's information in general was weak and far from sufficient. But at thousands of versts from the centers of the workers' movement and Marxist thought — from Berlin, Petersburg, and Geneva — Vladimir Ilyich sensed that revisionist decay was in the air.

Bourgeois decay was felt by him in the Kantianism beginning to come into fashion, in the timid as yet attempts to revise Marx's economic doctrine, in Bulgakov's "demolition" of Kautsky... From all this Vladimir Ilyich, as he himself writes, begins to fall into "frenzy." From his "not beautiful distant place," he does not yet see the true disposition of the enemy's forces, cannot judge whether this or that statement (by Struve, Bulgakov, or Bernstein himself) is a partial error of a "comrade" or genuine betrayal, a final transition to an alien class point of view; he has not yet seen the principal works of his opponents (Bernstein's book, the declarations of Rabochaya Mysl and Prokopovich), but he already cannot "endure" and begins combat operations, "pasting in remarks and sallies" against revisionism in his legal articles on what seemed to be academic topics.

A few months later — after becoming acquainted with Bernstein's book, with Prokopovich-Kuskova's "Credo," with Rabochaya Mysl — these "sallies" would transform into a direct frontal attack along the entire front of revisionism.

But even now Lenin is indignant and wonders: why is Plekhanov silent? why doesn't he shoot? (see our note 18 to letter 4, of June 27, '99). At the same time, between the lines of the letters, calculated of course to pass through the "black cabinets" of the Tsar's secret police, there clearly shines through the thought of the insufficiency of legal-Marxist literature, of the necessity for a clear demarcation with "liberals in disguise" passing themselves off as Marxists, of the categorical need to create a genuine Marxist party press, of the future Iskra and Zarya.

The letters being published are remarkable and valuable for Lenin's biography and the history of Leninism precisely because they uncover the internal work that was seething in Lenin during the silent years of exile and which led him to the creation of Iskra with its orthodox "intolerance" and "furious" struggle against revisionism of all kinds and varieties. And only in this struggle could be forged the program and tactics of proletarian communism, which was destined to pass through three revolutions and become the banner of the proletarian revolution of the twentieth century. About this silent preparatory stage, until now we have been able to judge only by separate inevitably-obscure hints in Lenin's legal articles of 1898 and the first half of 1899 (see the indication of these hints in my foreword and afterword to vols. II and III of the Collected Works).

The published letters reveal before us the genuine picture of Vladimir Ilyich's thoughts and moods of that time.

These letters are also interesting for the remarks devoted in them to Axelrod's pamphlet "The Historical Position and Mutual Relationship of Liberal and Socialist Democracy in Russia." The very title of the pamphlet shows that it is devoted to the fundamental question of the Russian revolution, namely that question which already in the first revolution of 1905 divided the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks once and for all. The foundational significance of this Axelrod pamphlet for Menshevism is beyond question. No wonder Menshevik historians of the party and revolution consider it the highest expression of Menshevik tactical wisdom. All the more remarkable is it that already upon first acquaintance with it in 1899, Lenin clearly and decisively noted those dangerous tendencies in it which subsequently, beginning in 1904, wholly determined Menshevik tactics of servility to liberalism. Axelrod — Lenin wrote in 1899 — "ought to have stated more sharply the class character of the workers' movement, and then not shown such favor to the oppositional agrarians" (the zemstvos, and later — the Cadets. L. K.). Further: "in my opinion 'to utilize'" (i.e., to use the liberal movement. L. K.) "is a far more precise and appropriate word than 'support' and 'alliance.'" Further: "'Support'" (for the workers' movement. L. K.) "'will come far not only from the intelligentsia and liberal landowners'" (zemstvos. L. K.), "'but also from those peasants who are inclined to represent not prejudices, but Reason, the future, not the past of their class.'" "Axelrod fought against an abstract, contemptuous attitude toward moderate liberals (this is correct — one must not despise them at all, one must utilize them) and thereby somewhat obscured the independent and more decisive position occupied by the workers' movement" — Lenin summarized.

Does there not lie hidden in these Axelrod positions (toward whom Vladimir Ilyich at that time had the greatest respect) and Lenin's counter-positions on the fundamental questions of revolution, as in a seed, all the future opposition of Menshevism and Bolshevism in the years of the first revolution?

If to all the above we add that the published letters contain the most interesting indications regarding the article "What Heritage Do We Reject?", remarks on other Lenin articles, and a mass of incidental observations on philosophy, Marx's theory, contemporary journalism, etc., then the value of the letters becomes completely evident. The letters were preserved in the archive of A. N. Potresov, to whom we owe gratitude for the possibility of their publication. In the commentary to the letters, comrade A. Y. Troitsky rendered me substantial assistance.

L. Kamenev.